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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Is America A Democracy?

There is a famous story, that when Benjamin Franklin was
walking out of the Constitutional Convention after it had ended, a woman called
out to him “What did you give us, a republic, or a democracy?”

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

In America we began as a republic. But what is a democracy?
Is it not another word for republic? Well, it seems that the founding fathers
did not agree on that score.

“The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are:
first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of
citizens elected by the rest… Under such a regulation, it may well happen that
the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more
consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves,
convened for the purpose.”1

That is to say, in a democracy,
the people rule, while in a republic, the representatives rule with the consent
of the people. If they rule poorly, then out they go, and again join the voting
class.

The difference between a
Democratic-Constitutional-Republic and a pure Democracy is that the law is
above the people in the one, and the people are the law in the other. There is
little protection for the minority is such a situation. If 51 percent want something,
49 percent can do nothing about it. Thus we have a tyranny of the mob, which is
a dreadful prospect. Tyranny of the majority will lead in the end to tyranny of
the one, because from the civil war will come a savior of the people.

Pure democracy is not a good
idea. It is a bad one. In such a case, what 51 out of every hundred men and
women want is law. If the will of the people is one day to kill all six year
olds than under pure democracy we must do that. Any higher law than the people
is under pure democracy a terrible and unjust thing, for it stifles personal
liberty. I might mention as a case of democracy Paris, at the time of the
French Revolution. If pure democracy is 51 percent, than why not a 51 percent
police force? It “cuts out the middle man” as it were, and makes more certain
that the will of the people will be obeyed. We are not yet a democracy, thank
God; we are a republic, can we keep it? That is for you to decide.